Everything's a dream when you're alone
by NemooftheNautilus
Summary: So I watched Wes Craven's Swamp Thing movie and I just felt I had to write this story. It's my first try at climate fiction, but I still tried to keep it a very personal story. Hope you guys enjoy reading it!
1. Alpha

"When you see beauty in desolation, it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you."

Jeff VanderMeer

In the warm winter of earth's worst year, I fell in love. The planet was boiling - forests, lakes, seas, glaciers, they were all victim of a mass vibration that was slowly but surely moving towards self immolation. I was at that time working as the manager of an orange farm in the metaphorical heart of Louisiana, watching the fruits lose their colour slowly as each year passed.

It wasn't always this way. I remember growing up in Portland, playing hooky on light rainy days, to cycle up the hill behind the abandoned saw mill, reach the top, all sweating and exhausted, heart pounding and muscles throbbing. I'd lay down on that emerald carpet of grass, arms and legs spread out, the dew-covered blades of grass brushing against my skin. A light breeze would every now and then take the exhaustion away, and the clouds would part to let a little bit of light fall on my face, revitalizing me. Falling asleep in that field of intimately connected life, my anxiety and loneliness would always seem to be relieved.

Early in my 20s, the government cut funding for the EPA, to make room for a bigger budget towards space exploration. I was out of a job, my life's goal deemed irrelevant. The decision for those of us who wanted to save the planet had been made by those who had long ago forlorn it. The media narrative had been about finding a new home, sailing into the final frontier looking for islands of great fruit. Eden was to be made again.

For my last assignment, I'd been sent to the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland and swamp in the United States, in an attempt by those of us who still cared about the planet, to save it. It was there that I met him, said to be the most brilliant mind in the field, but as I observed, definitely the most caring. He cared about nature and the planet and fiercely fought for it, and some would say he paid the price. That assignment was the last for both of us, but I only lost my job, he literally exploded. There was an "accident" at the lab, cause unknown, and the whole camp where we had set up our labs caught fire, and exploded. Everyone made it out alive, except him. The official report was that the work we were doing proved unstable and produced the opposite results to what were expected, which in turn gave Washington the reason they needed to cut funding. My whole department was canned, and we naturally suspected foul play, or at least freak incident. Many of my colleagues tried to start an official investigation into the matter, and still are. Although one thing everyone agreed on, he was dead either in the explosion, or lost to the swamp.

I was laying low since then, because I knew something that made me a potential target, and if I'd learned one thing from my time with the government - a potential target was a target. The ridiculousness of the whole thing wasn't lost on me, but I wasn't willing to take any chances anyway, at least not for a while. Besides, that wasn't my only reason for staying. Like I said, I was in love.

To criticize the Louisiana weather would be hypocritical, since I'd chosen to stay here, and part of loving was accepting the flaws, and even after the scorching heat, soaking humidity and a myriad of bugs and plants scratching me up, I had to admit I was in love with all of it, partly because of him. On a boat ride through the thickest part of the swamp, he had said to me once, "There is great beauty in the swamp -- if you know where to look."

So as I walked through the reeds leading to the swamp in the evening light, I tried my best to think of the destination and not worry too much about the journey. It wasn't an easy hike, but I distracted myself by trying to identify as many species as I could. By now a faint trail had been created by my daily commute, which to be fair, only I could tell was there, so it was a little easier, but it wasn't without its cuts and stickiness, even though I was covered head to toe in cloth.

The halfway point of my journey was the gigantic fallen swamp white oak tree, half submerged in water. At a glance, one could make out a peculiar growth of vines on the bark, and on close inspection one would see that the vines actually made words.

They read - "Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd

Around their shores, indignant burning with the fires of Orc…"

I stopped at the tree and rested my butt on the bark for some time, and then continued on my journey, walking along the edge of the swamp until I reached a particularly large collection of shrubbery. It hid a small wooden boat with two oars, which I would use to go deeper within the wetlands. The Atchafalaya Swamp was so huge and untainted by human touch, that anyone who went deep enough would experience an entirely different world. I had to row for an hour under the thick cover of marshy trees, through viscous waters over which plants and insects unraveled their life. By the time I reached my destination, I smelled worse than the swamp. My clothes were heavier soaked with sweat and sticking to my body, heat trapped in my hair even though it was tied up as tightly as possible, my face red as a cherry. But finally I was here - a small island in the middle of marshes and wetland, not bigger than a tennis court, full of various colourful orchids and a huge swamp tree right in the middle. I docked my boat, stepped onto the island, walked around the tree, and there he was, chest deep in the water, his back to me, facing the last rays of light that made their way through the thick, taking in the last ounce of light before the sun finally set.

The news had gave him the moniker "Swamp Thing" - apparently they couldn't settle on a catchier monster name and this was the temporary one that just stuck. His government designation was "Chrysalis" - they thought the swamp was his cocoon and they could unlock his full potential, which they said definitely was not as a weapon, once they got him out of his swamp. He had many other titles, The Reaper, Green Inferno, Earth Cannibal, and the list grew each passing day. Me, I just called him Ash.

I sat under the tree quietly observing him. He was about eleven feet right now, a stem like exterior covered with vines, moss, tendrils held together by a bark like texture protruding in certain areas; shades of brown, green and yellow creepily changing shades in the sun. His hands rested on the surface of the water, floating gently like lotuses. A plethora of vivid green saplings grew towards the sun from his forearms, their baby leaves dancing to the wind's musty tune. He once said to me the sunlight was the purest nutrition he had ever had, although he sometimes missed the taste of canned beans. If I could pull back from his frame though, I could see he really was just a part of the swamp. I doubt someone passing by would even notice, or be able to tell the difference between him and the tree, and if it wasn't for the metaphorical light I saw inside him, some part of him that was still individual, and not this cog in a swamp, I wouldn't either.

Once night fell, the swamp lit up with a calefying slowly flickering glow that reflected off the trees. Ash lowered himself underwater, and I could make out the ripples in the water slowly moving towards me. It was time for the shedding, and so I stood up to greet him. He rose from the water six feet tall, a humanoid figure with two vines across his chest like straps, cylindrical legs with little sprouts here and there, his hands were branching, and a lot more moss overall. My eyes were still adjusting to the change in lighting, so I couldn't make out the finer details of his face, but I realised something was unusual, and I laughed out loud when his face finally came into focus. Tiny water willows had covered his entire jaw, blooming outwards and petals overlapping one another in some places, holding sprouts of water.

Ash frowned just a little, like a little pup who's been left home alone. "Everyone always keeps describing me as a horrifying terrible monster, so I was just trying out something new.", he said in a starkly faint and posh voice. For a hulkling, he was very restrained in his expressions, and it'd been long since he had lost his accent, which made his voice even more eerie.

I stepped closer to him and moved my palm to inches from his cheeks. I waited for his nod, and while his head was tilted downwards, the opacity of his red corneas decreased to reveal his human eyes underneath. It was a momentary peek into the man that was still in there. I put my hand on his cheek, fingers digging into the willow beard until they reached skin, and slowly caressed his face, curling and unfurling my fingers. He slowly leaned into my palm as if to rest the entire weight of his head in my hand.

"You know what? It's growing on me, Ash. But you have to know, you're beautiful either way, and I'm not just saying that. Everything you do and everything you are makes you beautiful, and you're more beautiful than anyone I've ever met. Okay?" I said slowly pulling my now wet hand away. The water was ice cold and I wiped the hot sweat off my face with it, some falling on my lips. It tasted sweet, almost like fresh water.

"How is everything outside?" Ash asked his usual question.

"Getting shittier each day." I thought with my usual answer as we proceeded to sit down and I pulled some newspapers of the week from my backpack and read him the highlights.

There was a breeze of unrest and paranoia running through the country. Environmental lobbies had gone nuclear demanding there be some kind of a department to care for the environment, but they were in a losing battle. Constant forest fires and polar vortexes had left a bitter taste in the public's mouth, and when the CDC had declared a temporary ban on entry into major national parks in the country after a toxic outbreak of nerval gas had been reported days apart. What caused this was anybody's guess, some people said it was the government, the government said it was the trees, and since the trees couldn't say anything, the matter was halted from being taken further. Of course the only people who could so to speak, well, speak with the trees, like me and Ash, were out of a job. There was a ditch attempt by congress to pass a bill to create a new EPA, an Environmental Preservation Agency, whose job would be to put a proverbial dome on the ecosystems and basically gather enough data so as to stick it into a neatly designed scrapbook, for when we eventually entered the new Era of human civilization, wherever it be, this would serve as a nice museum piece. However, leaked sources sang of a bipartisan bill in the making that would focus more on a private-public joint synthetic farming project, and a number of think tanks were being deployed in realization of this scheme. This meant one simple thing, natural forestry was to be done with forever, and synthesized, composited, planned, constructed forests and farms were to be the future. And the narrative was 'Really, why not? If it talks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's all just protein anyway...'

But of course nature wasn't to be done with forever. Just how once organic products used to be the craze, even though they were less economical and more wasteful, so too now would be natural forests the craze, the exclusive patches of land belonging to the richest, centurial trees a novelty made by the world's greatest and oldest artist, itself. Those were the two scenarios, the poor live on a waning planet and eat soylent, and the rich drifting across space holding earth's green children, looking to plant themselves on strange new worlds. Amidst the promise of this not too distant future, the swamp was one of the few places remaining intact, for now. Atchafalaya was one of the few basins that hadn't run dry yet, and it had enough tributaries still to dilute the water pollutants. It was still quite unexplored, and we were the last team sent inside the swamp, and after the accident and then the toxic outbreak, government was more than hesitant to come near it until they had passed proper legislation, which as government does, could take a while.

Ash listened to me reading this climatic drama - political and environmental - intently, but it was more out of self-preservation than actual care for what was happening. He'd stopped longing for the outside world for a while now. Every passing day the swamp became more and more comfortable to him. By the time I got to the finance section, I knew he'd trailed off to somewhere I couldn't reach him. He did that every now and then, and it made me feel unwanted, but then I waved it off as one of the things you had to take when in love with a giant tree man. So I kept the papers aside, stretched my legs and sat on my side, and decided to wait for him to come back. Then again, I wasn't known for my patience, or my resolute decisiveness, so I broke the silence a little too loud, calling to him, "So... Blake huh?"

He looked right at me, staring at me then what I thought was wincing, then above me, and reached his hand out fleetly and plucked something over my head, which I observed when he pulled back was a wasp, held delicately between his fingertips. With his other hand, he plucked a bright yellow honeysuckle from his back, placed the wasp in its center, and set the flower afloat onto the water.

"Don't worry, he won't sting. Only females do." he paused, "_Fiery the angels rose..._ I dreamed about it the other day, but I don't remember drawing it anywhere, I guess it's getting more frequent."

Ash liked to sometimes carve onto deadwood, or draw onto live ones with foxfire (bioluminescent fungi clusters), random phrases he would think of, mostly as scarecrows to keep people away. Theatrics he thought was important, and I could see why because he was kind of an insecure monster, as monsters went in the traditional sense. So at random points on the circumference of the swamp you would find obscure literature. One time he even wrote Dante's poetry all over to mimic the seven circles of hell with our island at the centre. Maybe swamp life was not as interesting as he'd thought or I'd hoped.

"Forget about all that for now Ash. I'm hungry." I said taking his hands in mine and pulling him towards me. Maybe it was my eyes in the dim light, but right now he looked more human than usual, only with a radium skin and hazy red eyes. I threw my arms around his neck stuck my chest to his.

"I thought you were hungry." he said cheerily, resting his hands on my back.

"I am." I replied with a sultry grin and lightly brushed my lips against his, or at least the place where they were supposed to be. He moved his hands inside my top and tightened his embrace.

"The sun's warmth is nothing compared to yours." he whispered. I kissed him again. His body temperature was always cold as a clam, and his texture varied from rough to plastic. Nothing about him was ever permanent except his light, and he constantly changed himself thinking it would make it more comfortable for me to be with him, even though I had always told him of the frivolity of it.

I pulled him further in and we both fell to the ground, he on top of me, and I could hear the swamp fall silent. It felt like all eyes were on me, every branch, flower and blade of grass were about to observe some sacred ritual, and the whole network almost tightened in a reverie that hadn't even happened yet. Even the creatures not belonging to the green fell silent, the croakers, critters, buzzers and groaners all bowed out of the vicinity to give us complete privacy. I was out in the open world but I had never felt so enveloped before. I felt him all over my skin, even the dirt rolling gently across my pores, and my hair stood up every time I felt the cold touch, sometimes in multiple places at once. He wasn't holding back today, and he had limbs to spare and then some. I lodged my hand into an opening in the bark on his back, holding tight, and closed my eyes. His grip on me, all of me, curled and tightened, squeezing my mouth wide open, giving out a deep moan.

What followed I cannot describe, partly for lack of words and partly because I was consumed by overwhelming pleasure and indelicate ecstasy, but suffice to say, I slept like a baby after.

"You doing okay?" he kept asking me every now and then, and after, and I had my eyes closed the whole time, just nodding or humming in affirmative with a devilish smile plastered on my face.

By the time the swamp stopped holding its breath and noised back to life, me and Ash were sprawled at the base of the tree - my head resting on his chest looking up, his hand on my stomach, fingers intertwined with mine. I was cool and wet, a slight breeze carrying my no doubt strong odour away and above, and I could tell Ash could smell me, and it made me giddy to see he liked it, giddy like a sinful little child stealing glances in school with your crush.

The trees had watched us, and now we were watching them dance to the psithurism and release heaps of pollen, sparkling through in the air. It was a rare sight to see in this world, and it evoked a sigh of despair inside me, a feeling of chosen helplessness towards their plight. Soon they would be extinct or abandoned or torn away from their home and placed in some lab, and the swamp would just be an idea or a simulation made by us. Maybe Ash wouldn't let that happen. He wouldn't.

I turned on my side, cheek rubbing against his soft grassy belly. He had bark around his chest plates, with tears in numerous places, and I slid my hand into one of the gaps to find a soft squishy layer, which was sensitive for him.

"That's... That's my cambium." he said writhing with a shiver, like you'd get if someone ran their finger across your back. "You're at my most vulnerable spot."

"What happens if I interfere?" I asked craning my neck up.

"Well... " he relaxed slightly, "you'd risk damaging tissue and exposure, and the same fungi who help me so much would love to make it their home. Soon flesh-eating beatles would crawl in there and set their larvae everywhere, and bit by bit this body will rot away and die."

"But you won't."

"No, I won't."

"The Green will just let you create another body."

"I'll let me create another body... any way I want."

"Any way..." I pressed on his tissue and watched him squirm, "... but human."

Ash shot up and zipped away from me. He took a brief moment to bring himself back to his usual self and calmly said, "but _we're_ not human."

I made my way on top of him and held his face in my cheeks and talked as quickly as I could, "Ash, Ash, Ash my love I don't how it is inside this body, inside this mind you share with _them_, but listen to me, you belong to me okay? You're mine, and I won't let anyone take you away from me."

He looked me straight in the eyes - I wondered if he saw me all blood red - and with a half smile he replied, "So I'm to be either yours or theirs huh? Well, I guess since I'm dead I might as well belong to someone."

"Ash don't talk like that. You know I'm saying this out of love. I wouldn't be here otherwise."

"Yeah. When you're not here though, I keep talking with them, just endless chatter and exchange of information. They mock humanity, our sense of individuality, that we have the freedom and more so the audacity to be able to turn our backs on our fellow humans, on our planet, on anything we love, on some notion of person and self preservation. That love they have witnessed throughout history they say is not real love, because we care about the self and only the self, and everyone else is just a fiction of our mind, or perception of them. We cannot love because we cannot connect, and we try slighter every day."

I glared at him with sudden disbelief, a glaring canker growing in me.

He took my hand in his, tittered and said, "Yet every day when you go away, they ask me to join them, become one with the Green, to make my life much simpler and happier, and every time I refuse, and they fall silent."

My head now looked away from him, thoughts trying to run out of the swamp, somewhere much much hotter. He held me by the hip and moved closer, kissed me long on the cheek, and I could smell the sugary sweetness of his skin. I don't know if it was him deliberately releasing this scent to quell me, or it was involuntary, but it seemed to put me in a docile condition temporarily. Dirty tricks went both ways in our relationship, but that son of a bitch had a longer sleeve packed with a bunch of them.

"I don't know what I am anymore, but I don't belong to them, and I know I can't be as human as you'd want me to be but I promise I am yours, forever."

He was about to pull back when I kissed him hard, breathing in all the sweetness I could, experiencing the simple pleasure of his mouth curving into a wide smile as I kept my lips locked on them. I pulled away and ran my fingers through his willow beard once more, pecking him on the forehead as he hugged me, his head buried in my bosom, me holding on to him like it was the last time, because it very well might be. I didn't know if it was going to be the same body next time I saw him, and I wanted to feel every inch of his body, every blade of grass, every rough bark, fingers tangled in every vine and tendril, palms wet with every little trough and dew filled moss. I didn't even know if it would be the same Ash, or just a facsimile of his consciousness plastered onto another mosaic of a plant man. I would ask myself often if I wasn't just deluding myself, being in love with the aspect of a "swamp thing" rather than the thing himself, or that scientist who died long ago, or maybe just some Proustian fantasy from my past - a chance to live in the old world again, to live with Eden himself. I would've hesitated to admit it was all those reasons, if I didn't so brightly and clearly see the light inside him, even if I had my eyes shut.

"You'd take me however I am right?" He whispered, voice raspy and a little shaky.

"I love _you_." I replied. My Ash was right here, in my arms, in my mind and in every electric impulse of my body. Maybe the Green was right and I couldn't really connect with him, I couldn't touch the light, but I was human and damn well sure I'd come as close I could, and never inch away.


	2. Beta

"Everything I loved was lost

But no aorta could report regret.

A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;

And blood-black nothingness began to spin

A system of cells interlinked within

Cells interlinked within cells interlinked

Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct

Against the dark, a tall white fountain played."

Vladimir Nabokov

I don't remember falling asleep, and when I awoke it was as though in a different life, one where the air wasn't burning with sand and I was still 12 years old. This wasn't real.

I opened my eyes, and I was covered in leaves and vines. Ash was right next to me, still asleep, no doubt in a different plane of existence, one where he and the Green, the group consciousness of the flora existed. I don't know what they were doing to him, but I was certain he'd pull through. He was always a tough guy. I remember when we drove up to Alaska once - he owned a cabin there - on our weekend off. Bitter cold chewed through our garments, and we were buried in each other's arms on a tiny bed in a weather hardened shanty a few roads away from the coast. We'd only been dating a short while until now. I had had more than enough experience to know dating a co-worker always ended badly, and he was supposed to be that guy who like nature more than people, would date a tree rather than a woman kinda guy, notorious that way, which was one of the reasons I agreed to be assigned with him in the first place. And it was like that, we barely spoke for the first two days.

"You're the most beautiful creature I've ever encountered." he says on the third day, in a clinical tone.

I told him it was inappropriate and he agreed, and went on quietly about his day, to which I should've minded heavily, and some part of me did, but I let it go because 1) Job 2) Job Security 3) Nobody had ever said that to me before. It was not flattering, but intriguing, so I decided to be clinical about it as well. And in our cold calculated fascination, we were tangled in bed, me still within myself, him somewhere out of this room. It was like two toasters trying to plug themselves into each other.

So when he offered to take me to Alaska, of course I said yes, mainly because it was Alaska, and I sensed no real doubt from him, which was strange and also relieving at its most paranoia inducing. Homer, the small town where temperatures still hopefully dropped to 0 degrees, would be a nice reminder of a begotten time. And so we went.

And so we were, in bed, clearly ill prepared for the cold, laying tightly clenched, wondering what to do. None of us was brave enough to walk to the kitchen and cook a meal, so we opened up some purewater brandy, one of the last of its kind, and gulped it down from the bottle. Once sufficiently drunk and warm, we decided to get out of bed and run barefeet to the beach. The gravelly beach was smoothened by the incessant waves, and we wobbled our way up the coast to a small cave, where inside the air was damp and cool but the water somehow lukewarm.

"Did you know this was here?" I asked tugging at his sweater to stop him.

"I came here all the time as a kid." He replied all gleeful, turned and picked me up and ran towards a dry rock. "Don't stay too long in the water."

"Why not?" I asked, as he put me down. I lay flat on the rock and looked at my toes, not being as wiggly as I wanted them to be. I just assumed it was the cold.

"I used to come here as a kid to relax, listen to the sea, observe some tiny fish as they swam hither thither." He sat down next to me, and continued, "One summer day, I run up to the cave, drunk as I am now, except then on childhood wonder, and I don't even notice until I'm already ankle deep in something squishy. I look down and I don't think I've ever sobered up quicker; a horde of jellyfish lay all over the cave, hit by the rocks, hit by the sea, stacked on top of each other. It was like bodies remaining from a war, only it was worse. These jellyfish, they were still alive, at least those that hadn't been hit on the rocks too hard. They were alive, but I knew not for long."

I sat up, and I studied his face. The cold calculated man I was fascinated with was gone, and instead there was this warm, gooey, man who looked like he was in pain, waiting to burst with tears.

He looked right at me, "they called it the blob. You probably read about it in the papers, or maybe not. Ocean warming. More algae grew, shellfish ate it more, and released more paralyzing biotoxin into the water." He paused, resting his forehead in his hands. "I didn't understand it then. We were always taught evolution would save us, survival of the fittest and whatnot. Nature would choose who lives and who dies."

"But it doesn't, not anymore, does it?" I said.

"No, I always try to pinpoint that one moment when we overtook nature. First time we made a tool? Burned fossil fuels? The creation of plastic? Synthesized meat? I can't seem to be satisfied with one answer, but I know this, before us the universe was eternal, and it will be eternal after us. Only we die, and so I guess we only thought it fit to take the rest down with us."

"But here we are, trying to save it. Yes there are people who don't care about things bigger than themselves, but that's not who we are as a species, our legacy is one of innovation, intelligence, and not death and destruction."

"I didn't take you for an optimist."

"I wasn't."

"Oh? What changed?"

"I saw a little boy crying over jellyfish, and how it drove him to save the world."

He smiled. "But I haven't. The world's going to shit anyway."

I went in close to him and whispered, "and you're gonna promise me you won't stop fighting anyway, no matter the cost."

He sighed and looked away.

I pulled back his gaze towards me. "Did you mean what you said about me?"

"Absolutely." He replied, unflinching.

"Then promise me, and kiss me."

"Do you know what you're saying?"

"I'm giving you my future."

He smiled ear to ear, nose red with cold, eyes warm and moist, and he kissed me, and I felt his warmth for the first time. He held me tighter, rubbing his hand against my back. We weren't toasters anymore.

"I promise to fight for our future."

Our. What a wonderful, scary word that was. Bound together as one entity, yet more than the sum of mere parts.

And sometimes I wish I hadn't made that promise, only so that he could be still human. But I open my eyes in the morning and I look at him, one hand in mine and one hand nurturing the grass under it, torn between two ours but also more closer to the two things he loved most than ever before, or so I told myself to soothe my conscience.

Being careful not to wake him up, I moved away from him. My body started heating up, and I felt feverish. I felt suffocated in my clothes, so I threw them off like a maniac, until I was naked as the trees in the swamp, naked as Ash.

The sun wasn't up yet, the swamp was still glowing but the darkness had started to dissipate. It was probably the least hot time of the day right now, and I decided to take advantage of it. Wading into the swamp water up to my neck, my body started to revert to normal temperature, and I slowly relaxed, eventually immersing myself fully underwater. I opened my eyes and everything was a tint of reddish green, full of tufts of algae, blades of tape grass and Hydrilla. I rose above water when I couldn't hold my breath in any longer, and then just as the first ray of sun broke through the canopy, a strange want struck me. I waded deeper until my face was directly in the sunlight, and I closed my eyes and stood there just as Ash did, arms resting on fanwort leaves to give the illusion as if they were floating on water. I had no way of photosynthesizing, and beyond the Vitamin D, no way of nurturing myself from it. If anything, these rays were getting more and more harmful for me every day. A few decades more and it would be napalm. Yet these young rays of the day, they played warm and cozy against the water on my face, and for a while, I don't know how long it was, I felt nourishment, like I was soaked in fire and ice balanced by a tiny wall.

Soon I felt Ash's chest stuck to my back, his hands running along my arms, and I slowly turned around eyes still closed, and didn't open them until he planted a kiss on my forehead.

"Can you play some Sinatra please? It's been a while." Ash requested as I was putting my clothes back on.

"I thought you'd be onto the florosus grand orchestra by now or something."

"Well, sadly they don't really take requests."

"Definitely sounds like them."

Ash made a face and I blew him a sardonic kiss, and soon the forest was echoing Frank's voice singing I've Got You Under My Skin. Ash listened as he made breakfast, and I was half-listening while scribbling away into my notebook. I was never particularly nostalgic, nor a fan of Sinatra's drunken droning but I understood why Ash bothered with these things. We all needed things in a dying world that would remind us of a better one - a poem, a place, a smell, or a song, something that would take us back to perfect moments, when maybe life around us wasn't so perfect, but we weren't aware, and we still lived in that bubble of pure untarnished happiness. I may have once believed that chasing such happiness, such moments and memories glazed in nostalgic perfection was not only counterproductive, but even irresponsible and harmful, blaming it for the collapse of the real world. But now, when every day I was with Ash, and I looked into his eyes, I felt that rush of pure happiness, and it propelled me towards a hopeful tomorrow, and for most of my days, I was a nicer person. Maybe before I could have saved the world, conquered space, controlled life itself, but I wouldn't have had anyone to share it with, and maybe that's okay for some people, maybe that's enough. Alas, it took a Swamp Thing for me to realise I was a romantic.

I think, or like to think, that everyone remembers the first time they realised death existed. It's funny that for all our sentience and intelligence, we rarely think about the only certainty we have in life. We don't think about death for a number of reasons, because we've been told it's unpleasant, because it makes everyone sad, because we don't have to think about it now, we'll always have more time. As a child loitering in the woods all the time, I had a habit of chewing on every leafy thing I could find. I don't remember where it came from, but for while I assumed that all the green was nourishment. One day my mother caught me with a mouthful of grass and she told me I shouldn't do that, because its hurting and killing the grass. I eventually stopped of course, not because of what my mother told me, but because the leaves got bitter and toxic. Now however, my habit was back, and every now and then I would find myself nibbling on Ash like a leisurely deer or a lazy boar. He didn't particularly enjoy it but let me do it all the same.

"You know if you're hungry I can always serve up my whole arm for you, you don't have to grit your teeth against my shoulder bark like that."

"It's just an old habit Ash, I'm fine."

"They don't like it when you do that."

"Oh yeah? And what about you?"

"Right. Well you can tell them I'm perfectly practical with where I nibble, it won't affect anything."

"It's not that, they just don't like it."

"You know, for being called a tree-lover all my life I'm not sure I really am one. After all, they don't seem to like me very much."

Morning was starting to tear into hot and humid midday, the colossal radiation searing the planet like a low and slow rub, and I felt like being underwater again.

"Anyway," I said, wiping off the sweat as it formed on my forehead, "Matt called me yesterday."

"How'd he know where to contact you?"

I shrugged. "He's ex-military man, so I wasn't surprised, so I didn't ask."

"What does want?" he asked, almost rhetorically, expecting the answer to be about him.

"He wants to offer me a job, in D. C."

"Take it."

"You don't even know what it is."

He just stared blankly at me.

"I'd have a chance to try to save this, all this" I said pointing around, "again."

"Okay."

The humidity made my head lucid. "I hate it when you're being like this. Talk to me, you have to talk to me about these things."

Ash sighed. "I just... I knew this was gonna happen, and I thought you did too. Don't try to deny it."

"I'm sorry, deny what?"

"This is where our road ends."

"I haven't taken the job yet Ash, what the fuck?"

"But you want to, and I'm not going to stop you."

"Really?" I knew where he was trying to go with this. For all the happy talk we did all the time, this was the kind of situation that was going to bring out the worst of us, and in that moment, I didn't feel like holding back anymore. "Come with me."

"What?"

"You heard me." He wasn't the only with dirty tricks.

His voice flustered, "That's ridiculous!"

I'd called his bluff.

"If you want me to take the job, then let me, but I also want you, so come with me."

"You know I can't leave here."

"Why not? Have you ever tried? You just lurk here living up to your stupid name!"

"I have a responsibility to them, you understand that?"

"Oh bullshit! What have you done for them? What can you do for them? They're dying Ash, this whole recruitment propaganda that they keep doing with you is nothing but a last resort, and I can tell you it's futile. But you already knew that, you had given up way before me. So, what is this really about?"

Ash stayed quiet, his red eyes growing more opaque by the second while mine growing equally red but teary. I was trembling, the vibrations of my body not unlike Gaia herself right now.

"You don't think this is going to work, do you? You don't love me enough to want to make it work."

"Its not as simple as that, and I do love you... "

"No you don't! Not where it counts. I loved you with everything I had, and I used to think it wasn't enough, I thought you were this unique, beautiful being that deserved all the love I could give and more."

"I'm a fucking monster all right?! I'm not your Ash, I'm not that human whose memories I inherited, I am a monster who was created by them to think like you, understand you, to stop you. And I'm not the first one, there have been many of these before me, and if this planet survives there'll be many after me."

"Do you love me, Ash?"

"The Green has a long, long memory and it knows how fucking scared humans are, how frail their mind is, all alone up there in that tiny skull, and just how alone that makes you. Humans cannot connect to anyone else in the way the Green is connected, and humanity, human relationships always end in pain, chaos, and sadness. Always."

"Do you love me?"

His lips quivered, but no voice was uttered. His eyes were wide at his lack of assertion of will, it was almost like his plant body had frozen right from within his xylem.

"Fuck you." I said with as clear a voice as I could muster, looking straight into his blank red eyes, a hard stare to make sure they saw it. And then I wobbled out of there, walking like a person intoxicated blind, no doubt high on my own hormones and the midday heat boiling my blood, frying and poaching my organs. The brain in my tiny skull was pulsing with ache, and I felt like poking my own eyes out.

I didn't realize how far I'd walked, or how long it had been, and I couldn't place where I was, closer to the edge or deeper inside, so shit, I was lost. I kept walking, almost stomping the grass and shrubbery beneath me. I wanted to burn the whole thing down. I wondered which was worse - the apathetic poisoning of the environment for profit, or the vengeful destruction of it out of sheer anger and spite? I decided both were equally shitty choices once I had let out some cries and cooled down both mentally and physically. Soon I found myself sitting under a tree and staring up at its crown thinking what a hypocritical asshole I was. Me, who had claimed to love and fight for the trees, nature, and all environment, had so quickly turned on it. I guess it's easy to love things when they can't talk back to you. There's a convenient perfection in imagination, and is it really love then? Real love, I reluctantly decided, was about loving someone even after knowing how shitty they can be, accepting them for who or what they are, even when they are hurtful. Ash still had the light inside him, I could sense it everywhere around me right now. I ran my hand along the roots of the tree until they went underground.

"I know you guys don't like to talk to us humans, but I appreciate all that you've done for us. I know we've made you angry lately, and I'm sorry you lashed out at us like that. I don't know if it's too late to save all of you, and I'm sorry for all of it. Somewhere along the way, in our hubris we all think we didn't need anyone else, that we can survive alone, but we can't, and you guys are the best example of that. I hope you can forgive us, because I promise, I will never ever forget all that you have taught us and given us."

I got up slowly, looked around, looked up; nothing but green. I started walking in the direction I came from, but after half an hour of displacement, the landscape had barely changed. Suddenly I felt something crawling on my arm, and when I looked, it was a hornet. It took off and flew into a tree where I noticed those same vines and bioluminescent fungi.

'I'm sorry' they spelled. The hornet took flight again and rested on another such installation.

'I love you.'

And then the hornet flew again, and revealed a path to me that I knew would lead back to him. I wasn't sure now if he loved me, but he definitely knew me better than anyone. He could have just popped up right now, but he decided to give me time instead. The walk back would give me time to cool down to think.Would he come with me if I decided to leave?

So I walked, with many things going through my mind, and I was alone and dreaming of good things and bad, yet I couldn't dream any dreams without him in them.


	3. Omega

"I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me."

Margaret Atwood

I have no idea where the shot came from. I felt my legs go limp and I was shoved forward, fell face first on the ground. Nothing for seconds but silence and numbness. Was it the Government? Matthew? Hunters? Private henchmen? Did it matter?

And then it started to burn like hell; bullet went in my back and out through my front, with a squishy hole in my intestines. Defeaning screams came out of me involuntarily, and it felt like someone had just taken a buzz saw to my brain, so much pain it was receiving. I rolled over to look around, but I could barely process anything I was seeing, and what little I could make out was all just green. Of course they must be wearing camouflage, I should know better by now. Then again, there's no protocol for these things, and if there was, no one had mailed me the checklist. Now I wish they had. I struggled with myself to get my backpack off me, hastily took out a blanket and wrapped it around my waist as tight as my body would allow me, my pain would allow me, without me passing out. It wasn't much but at least I wouldn't bleed like a fire hydrant.

I heard random shouts in the background, call signs, orders, confirmations, and any different versions of military-speak one could pick up from cable TV. Jesus, was I about to be taken out by some fucking amateurs?

No, this wasn't going to happen. If my legs aren't working, fine; let's drag. And so I moved on my side, and started dragging myself with one hand while the other held the blanket together. I just had to get somewhere I could take cover - a bush, a hollow tree, burrow, anything. But I had to get there quick, whoever it was wasn't particularly after me, or they would've caught me by now, they were obviously after Ash, but they if they did come across me they weren't going to be happy to see me alive. No witnesses.

So I dragged as hurriedly as I could, nails digging into the dirt, skin scraping across fallen branches, bark, and rocks. The noise seemed to be moving closer, but then took a sharp turn and veered off to the right and kept moving away until suddenly there was complete silence. Meanwhile, I'd dragged myself to a ficus - it had consumed its host tree completely and now was hollow - and I took shelter inside its thin but sturdy cover.

The blood was still draining out of my body, in gushes, quicker than I'd imagined was possible. Everyone who gets shot in movies gets some buffer time don't they? It's usually more than this, certainly their clothes aren't soaked in blood at minute two. Fuck. My body started feeling heavier and my mind was so light it was trying to float out of my skull. I was flat on my back now, it was getting harder and harder to keep pressure on the hole in my body, I tasted metal and lighter fluid in my mouth. All I could see was the endless ficus twisting upwards, a tiny hole at the end of it filled with light, flooding in at an acute angle.

Oh man, is this it?

Am I dead?

Motherfucker!

"Where am I?"

"You're in the Green." a bright flickering light answered.

As my eyes adjusted to it, I realised it was Ash, in human form. I jumped onto him and clung as hard as I could.

"Woah, hey, easy hon, I'm not 6 feet anymore." he kissed my neck.

I felt his heat, the shock wore off, and I pulled back.

"How am I in the Green?"

"Well, I guess they absorbed your consciousness, sorta downloaded you into their-"

"No, I mean how am I in the Green? I thought the Green was an entity."

"Well they are, but they're kinda like the Borg you know and-"

"Wait so what about my body? Also do you know who shot me? Shit, am I officially dead?"

He looked me dead in the eye. Does it fucking matter?

"We took care of them. You're safe now."

"Well..." I said, uncontrollably tearing up, "safe is really relative at this point isn't it?"

"I'm sorry. But you know, you can be with us now, we can be together now, always and forever."

He hugged me; even in human form, he was bigger than me, and I was enveloped in his arms.

"Yeah." I said weakly. Whatever we had fought about just hours before now seemed pointless. It was depressing really, to think that all that was in the past, and there wouldn't be any more. I never really thought about death in finite terms, the tiniest point in time that ends all movement in my body. No more creation, no more destruction, no more cells merging and dividing, only decay - the universe reclaiming what it had lent to us. I could still be happy, clearly I could be sad, but I'd never touch something knowing I'd never be able to again, I'd never sleep knowing I'd wake up again (I don't even know if I would sleep again), no more anxiety in my fingertips, no more relief in my chest, I'd just be a fixed set of memories slowly dissipating in an infinite elemental sea. I'd be Ash.

"Ash?" I said looking up at him, running my fingers across his face.

"Yes?"

"Do you remember your name?"

"What? You just said it."

"No, do you remember your name?"

"What difference does it make what our name is? It can be anything you want, we want. Don't you like Ash anymore?"

"All that time, all that knowledge, you still couldn't figure it out."

"What are you talking about?"

"I guess we have a lot more to learn about each other. Humans don't understand trees any more than you understand us."

"That's not true. We know everything about you. We provide for you, we care for you, we love you and you love us."

"I do love you, I think. All of you. But I don't think you love me, not yet at least."

"How can you say that?"

"I didn't realize it until today either. Not until I went through what billions had went through before. We humans like to document everything too, millenia of knowledge scrawled onto every piece of paper, our data upon you. So much effort trying to make sense of the chaos."

He stared at me, confused, not by my words, but confusion as to what he was going to do to make me happy again.

"You don't want to stay here." he finally said.

"I want you to be alive, but I can't have that. And I have to cope with that."

"I'm right here..."

"No, you're in my head, like you're in theirs."

He cupped my face in his hands, closed my eyes with his thumbs, and kissed me.

"You'll always be mine, Ash."

"I'll always be you."

I was felt like a child again, my face resting against the dew covered blades of grass, every inch of my body relaxed, connected to the life around me, connected to all natural life, only now I could recognize this feeling, I could word it. It was Ash, he felt like that. In hindsight, he'd always felt like that.

My eyes opened but nothing was visible. I lifted my hand and filled it scrape across a squishy membrane, although in some places it had dried out. Sudden realization of the tightness of my space made me flail my arms about looking to tear a hole in the membrane. Successful, light flooded in along with the smells of the swamp I was familiar with. I kept pulling at the tear until it was big enough for me to poke my head and shoulders out, and then I held out my hand down to the ground and pushed myself out.

I looked around, it was our island, the rays of dawn coming from behind the giant tree in the middle of the island. I looked at the crown, a mosaic of bark and leaves and empty pockets clout with light. My gaze slowly descended along the bark and the bottom, where I emerged, was a collection of husk and vines and moss and branch, all interwoven tightly (except for the giant hole I had just created) in the shape of a humanoid. A humanoid with now a big hole in his chest. I felt my own chest tighten, my hands clenched tighter, only when I realised there was something in my left one. Slowly opening it, I saw a seed resting in my palm, no bigger than a chicken's egg, shaped like a heart. A human heart.

Human? I quickly rushed to the water and stared into it, confirming the face staring back at me still looked human. I certainly didn't feel human. I felt something ablaze in my chest. I looked back at the remains of the humanoid, the hole more noticeable now, the darkness inside increasing in highlight. I slowly went back to look at the water, now more carefully, more patiently. And then I finally saw it again. The light. It was staring back at me. Human.

I couldn't see it, because of the tears in my eyes, and the light, but I could feel a giant grin across my face. His voice echoed in my head, and I held the seed to my heart, letting the light pass off some warmth to it.

The chaos seemed manageable.

In the next few days, I moved out of Louisiana. I was back in DC, looking for a new job. I had a tiny apartment in a sea of other apartments. It was dingy, cold, dusty, and everything had an unabashed decadence about it. The Earth was still getting worse.

Then, one day, I was in the kitchen, and I heard clay shatter in my bedroom window. The clay, which made up a pot, which held nothing but dirt, nothing but dirt and one seed, no bigger than a chicken's egg when it was planted. One life, one seed, one plant, one forest, one eden, one planet, so it went.


End file.
